Cook County Renewed a Lobbyist's Fake Senior Tax Breaks Right After He Repaid $101,807

A registered PepsiCo lobbyist who is actually 56 years old was ordered to repay $101,807 for 34 improper senior tax breaks on two Cook County rental properties — and then the county's own assessor office turned around and renewed those same tax breaks the following year. Armando W. Saleh secured 69 tax breaks over the years on two-flats he jointly owns with his wife, Maria, in Gage Park and Lawndale, saving the couple more than $80,000 in property taxes they should never have received.

The case, first detailed by Chicago Sun-Times reporters Tim Novak and Keenan Chen, shows Saleh's improper senior freeze claims stretch back decades. Armando and Maria Saleh bought their first home in Gage Park in August 1993 for $144,000, and records reviewed by county officials, as previously reported by The Real Deal, show Saleh began receiving senior assessment freeze tax breaks on a rental property as early as 1995, when he was in his 20s and working as chief of staff for a Cook County Board member — he was later promoted to chief of staff for then-Commissioner Joseph Mario Moreno.

The senior property tax exemption requires an applicant to be at least 65 years old, and the senior assessment freeze additionally requires household income below $65,000. Armando Saleh was born in August 1970, making him 56 today. Yet a March 11, 2024 senior tax-break application submitted under the name Ahmad Saleh — one of six such applications filed between 2012 and 2023 — reported a household income of $43,574 and, according to the Sun-Times, was accompanied by a passport stating that Saleh was 71 years old.

Two Properties, Dozens of Improper Breaks

Armando Saleh bought a second two-flat in Lawndale in 2001, with Saleh and Maria Manzano Saleh paying $150,000 for the property on Flournoy Street. Between 1998 and 2023, the couple received 40 senior tax breaks on their South Troy Street two-flat in Gage Park, which the Sun-Times reports reduced their real estate taxes by $22,023. On the Flournoy property in Lawndale, the couple received more than $58,000 in tax breaks between 2014 and 2023, with the breaks on that property alone saving $26,007.

When those improper exemptions were finally stripped, the tax bills reflected the true cost. Saleh's Gage Park two-flat tax bill jumped to $5,005.22 from $1,652.05, while the Lawndale two-flat bill rose to $10,499.97 from $1,780.44. Saleh ultimately paid $14,960 for the Troy property senior tax breaks and $86,948 for the Flournoy property tax breaks, penalties and interest, combining for the $101,807 total he repaid in 2024 under the 34 erroneous exemptions.

Then the County Renewed the Same Breaks Anyway

Despite that repayment, the Cook County Assessor's Office renewed Saleh's tax breaks on both buildings in 2025, cutting his property taxes by another $2,392 — meaning Saleh will now have to repay the tax breaks renewed that year as well. Illinois law limits residential property tax exemptions to one owner-occupied home, and Saleh's applications appear to have run afoul of that rule repeatedly across two separate two-flats he does not occupy as a primary residence.

Christina Lynch, the assessor's office legal director, told the Sun-Times that the office has not referred erroneous exemption cases to the state's attorney's office for prosecution since 2018. The office is now weighing whether to ask State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke to investigate Saleh's tax breaks, given the submission of conflicting applications and age documentation under different names.

Saleh's financial history includes several tax liens unrelated to the property exemptions. The Internal Revenue Service filed a $103,397 income-tax lien against him in 2007, which the IRS released in 2013. The Illinois Department of Revenue filed an $8,740 income-tax lien against Saleh in 2010, and the IRS filed another lien, for $35,886, in 2019.

Part of a Much Bigger Pattern

Saleh's case is far from isolated. Since taking office in January 2019, Assessor Fritz Kaegi's office identified 9,955 homeowners statewide who received improper tax exemptions, resulting in $69.3 million in demanded back taxes, penalties and interest, according to Southland News Dispatch. Cook County homeowners overall had to repay $59 million in erroneous tax breaks, and the tax breaks in question shifted $1.58 billion in taxes onto other property owners.

Other high-profile repayments illustrate how widespread the problem has been. Jill Fitzgerald, an 84-year-old Winnetka widow, repaid $393,919 for erroneous tax breaks, penalties and interest after an investigation found she claimed senior freeze breaks on a $7.1 million mansion while allegedly exceeding income limits following $2.5 million in property sales, as The Real Deal previously reported. Barbara and Martin Israel repaid $119,806, Walter Burnett Jr. and Darlena Burnett repaid $10,445, and the estate of Joseph Lombardi — who died in 2013 — repaid $16,271 in back taxes and interest. Chicago Budget Director Annette Guzman repaid $5,837 in tax breaks, penalties and interest after Hoodline reported she claimed primary-residence exemptions on a South Loop condo she had designated as an investment property in mortgage filings.

The scale of the senior freeze program itself helps explain why verification gaps matter so much. In tax year 2024, Cook County granted the Low-Income Senior Citizens Assessment Freeze to 98,892 properties, shifting $263 million in tax burden onto other residential and commercial property owners, per the same Southland News Dispatch report. The assessor's office approved tax breaks for 63% of the county's 1,586,788 residential property owners last year. Under 35 ILCS 200/9-275, property owners who receive three or more erroneous homestead exemptions over six years face a penalty equal to 50% of the unpaid tax principal plus 10% annual interest, with recovered principal distributed pro rata back to local taxing bodies while penalties and interest fund the assessor's administrative costs.

A Political Cost for Kaegi

The recurring errors carried consequences beyond individual tax bills. Lyons Township Assessor Patrick Hynes challenged Kaegi in the 2026 Democratic primary, drawing endorsements from Chicago aldermen and clergy amid public outrage over property tax spikes and exemption administration errors, as Hoodline reported in February. Hynes ultimately defeated Kaegi in that primary and will become the next Cook County Assessor.

Exemption fraud involving rental properties is not a new phenomenon in Cook County. Back in 2017, the assessor's office sought $1.2 million in back taxes, penalties and interest from suburban firm Mack Industries after discovering the company had improperly claimed homeowner exemptions on more than 100 rental properties using renters' names, according to CBS Chicago. With the state's income eligibility cap for the senior freeze set to rise from $65,000 to $75,000 in tax year 2026 — and eventually to $79,000 by 2029 — the pool of eligible applicants is set to grow even as questions remain about whether the county's renewal systems can catch cases like Saleh's before they repeat again.